tilted behaviour

25:15 … or twenty-five hours and fifteen minutes … or the amount of time it took me between landing in Las Vegas and gambling in a casino.

Unlike the previous four years which saw me hit the gamble within a few hours, I just didn’t fell the urge this time as I opted to go shopping or get hungover instead.

And hungover I did, as last night completely destroyed me, and when I woke up this morning, I swore death had arrived! Mateusz and I grabbed some lunch before jumping on a Pai Gow table where I made some money before eventually falling back to even.

Mateusz returned to his beloved slots and I decided to hit the poker room to take a seat in their lone $1-3 NLH game for $300 which had six players before I joined. One of the first hands I saw was a 100bb pot with middle pair after he called the flop with a backdoor gutshot before turning second pair and calling a substantial check-raise which ended up being good on the river.

That very player a few hands later opened to $16 from early position and I made the call with 6♠ 6♣ from the cutoff as the big blind called too. The K♠ Q♠ 6♥ saw a c-bet of $16 before I popped it up to $42. The big blind passed, but the original raiser made the call before calling off his last $50 on the turn of the 8♣. The river landed the J♣ and I scooped the pot to move to $406.

I then won a smallish pot with King-Queen in a straddle pot when I flopped top pair and got one street of value. As Mateusz returned to signify the end of my session before we had to head to dinner, I opened Q♣ Q♥ to $12 and got three callers to see a Q♠ J♠ 9♥ flop fall. I continued for $22 which found one fold before the player on the button made it $72. The small blind passed, and with my opponent having $90-ish in his stack, I decided to put him all in because of two reasons – firstly I didn’t want to fold regardless of if he had it, and secondly because regardless of the turn (mostly) I was probably calling it off.

I shipped, he called, and the turn and river landed the A♠ and K♠ … YUK! He slammed down his J♣ 9♦ for bottom two pair as I was pushed the pot to move over $620 before eventually cashing out for $618 several hands later.

We headed out to Henderson to Donnie and GG’s house for a cookout with some of our mates including DK, Cory, Kristy and Andrew.

GG cooked a slamming BBQ which included hamburgers, hot dogs and steaks as we ate a bucket load of food out in the backyard before setting up around the fire to talk shit and play a jumbo group game of Lodden Thinks.

It would be five hours before we’d eventually decide to vacate the premises as Mateusz and I made our way to New York New York to catch up with some of my mates from Geelong; Davo and Frog.

As Frog put it in a text message to me … he was chasing skirt … but with Davo gambling away at a roulette table, we decided to join him before persuading him to the Craps table. I quickly lost $100 and we moved back to a different roulette table where both Davo and Mateusz lost some coin as I made a quick $100 before BlackJack was the next stop. Davo went busto as I made a small profit before moving to the Pai Gow tables to join Mateusz.

Once Davo joined us, some cocktails were ordered as we slowly saw our stacks swing up and down. Eventually we decided to call it quits as I finished up $100 for the table and for the session as we left Davo to break the bank on the BlackJack tables.

Looking at the schedule at the start of the series, one event that I was blogging caught my eye.

The $5,000 Ante Up For Africa Celebrity-Charity Poker Tournament!

Covering the event with F-Train, we were all about the colour in this event since the play (mainly due to the structure) was never going to be amazing.

Headlining the celebrities included Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Montel Williams and Evander Holyfield while some of the pros in the field included Phil Ivey, Joe Hachem, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson as 84 players turned out to participate in this charity tournament.

One of the players that reached the final table – Alex Filatov – was asked by Phil Gordon when play was three-handed how much he was going to donate since it is expected that the full prizepool is donated back to the Ante Up for Africa charity.

Filatov replied with just 10% to get an awkward reaction from both Gordon and Shannon Elizabeth as well as many members of the media. The MC for the latter part of the event; Ali Nejad, then spiked a subtle sucker punch towards Filatov by announcing who the previous winners were and how much (100% for the record) they donated.

Luckily however, Filatov exited next as Gordon bested Elizabeth heads up to claim the $130,641 first prize, which thankfully went all back to the Ante Up for Africa charity just before we ticked into hour five of the tournament.

Although we had a slight delay in leaving the Rio courtesy of a false start to the Tournament of Champions, me and Greg eventually found our way back to the Hard Rock before stopping into Mr. Lucky’s for some dinner.

We caught up with Chad before Greg convinced us to head to Terrible’s Casino across the road so that we could degen it up.

Hitting the Blackjack table first, the dealer forced me into a Phil Hellmuth-esque explosion when she thought my waving of a hand for a stand was a hit, and busted me. The dealer rolled a 20 anyway, so hitting didn’t change anything, but that wasn’t the point as I was now officially tilted.

I quickly lost my last $50 – for the record I lost all ten hands I played – before heading over to the Craps table and plonking $200 down on the table.

I had never seen it before, but there was this fire bet where if you could hit five points in a row you would receive 150-1 on your bet, and six in a row meant 300-1. Either way it made the game so much more exciting as we sat on four (30-1) for ages as we just kept missing the point by a dimple here and there.

Randomly upping my bets, both Chad and another shooter started hitting some points and my numbers as I finally managed to hit some Craps run good and eventually turned my initial $200 into $850 as Chad also made a little money on the same table while Greg was playing bingo somewhere before we ventured home for the night.

I managed only a couple of hours of sleep last night before having to wake up nice and early to make my way to the airport.

Heath and Kirsty were arriving into town to prepare for their upcoming weekend wedding and consequently needed my car to get round. I was happy to lend it to him and as I arrived at the airport we did a straight stop as they took the keys and I made my way to check-in.

After I made my way through immigration I stopped by Duty Free and pondered buying a DSLR since we wouldn’t have one for New Zealand and the fact that I would definitely be putting it to use. I was looking at the Nikon D3000 ($899), Canon EOS1000d ($999) and the Canon EOS450d ($1,199) which all came with twin lenses as well as the fact that the salesman was willing to take some more off the price.

I tried contacting some of my in-the-know photography friends before boarding, but was unable to get hold of them and consequently decided against buying one.

The three-hour plane ride was spent with me mostly wriggling round in my seat trying to get comfortable while occasionally nodding off. We experienced some heavy turbulence over the last few minutes of the flight, but still managed to land safely in Christchurch as the driver greeted me a little on the late side that dropped me off at the Millennium hotel in town. Unfortunately my hotel reservations had been stuffed up and they had moved me over to their sister hotel called the Copthorne Durham which was located just across the road from the casino.

Once there I was checking in and was told that they had upgraded me to a suite. I grabbed my key and headed to my room.

Walking in my first reaction was, “this ain’t no f**king suite” as I looked into a normal room featuring two double beds and a standard bathroom. That was until I opened the door next to the bathroom and found a huge master bedroom featuring a king-size bed. I settled in and had a hot shower before deciding to make my way to the casino.

The casino was probably smaller than the whole Crown Poker Room combined!

Nine poker tables, a dozen or so table games but plenty of slots were spread room a fairly un-organised and confusing floor, but I headed straight to the cash game registration to see what was on offer.

$1-2 NLH (buy-in $75-$200), $1-2 NLH/PLO ($100-$200), $5-5 NLH ($200-$500) and $5-5 NLH/PLO ($200-$500) seemed to be the major games on offer with a few interest lists for 3-Card Manila and satellites.

With a tournament running it seemed like I wouldn’t get on a table for a little while and decided to sit on a $5 Blackjack table with $100 – which with the exchange rate worked out to be like $80 or so.

I played for around an hour and won a total of six hands. I wasn’t hitting on 20 or standing on 5, I was just playing basic sound strategy but getting owned by the dealer. For some reason however I managed to increase my bets at the right amount and finished only down $50 bored as all hell. Over to the Baccarat table I went and after losing $25, then winning $25, then losing $50 I went and grabbed a steak before my cash game opened up.

Yann decided to take half my action in the $1-2 NLH game as I sat down on a new table with $150 (weird set buy-in amounts of $80 – $150).

Without going through all the boring details of my session, I was extremely card dead but still managed to profit $90 (well really only $45) on a table full of fish who had no real idea what they were doing. The only upside was sitting on the right of a cute Asian girl called Mina. Although her boyfriend was sitting at the other end of the table – and paid her no attention at all – we spent the whole session chatting, and after she went busto, we decided to play one card each in a hope to get out of the run of cold cards that I was having. It didn’t work and I cashed out at around 3am after paying Yann his share of the stake.

I made my way back to the hotel and called it a night with a plan of getting out and exploring Christchurch the following day.

But in the meantime, check out this video that makes me el oh el about New Zealand . . . gotta feeling I’ll be watching it countless of times while here!

It was a surprisingly comfortable night in the car, and once up at around 11am I headed to the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre for the second consecutive day to have a shower.

With the annual Shane Warne Foundation Charity Tournament being held at Crown, only two $1-2 NLH tables were in operation once I arrived, and consequently I had to wait nearly ninety minutes to grab a seat. I spent my time waiting round having some lunch and catching up with some friends – mainly tournament supervisors Frank Bianco and Renee Howard.

Once my seat was called I found myself seated next to fellow low-stakes grinder and mate Rob – who had been absent from the recent few weeks of home games as he has been opting to donk off at Crown!

It was yet another terrible session as I was in for $200 within the first hour before winning my first pot and then spent the next few hours doing absolutely nothing with the stack I had in front of me before eventually being in for $300. Rob was on tilt after donking his once $300-plus stack and left as James took a seat on my left (as seen playing poker below . . . maybe it ain’t his forte though).

We had both intended on playing the Aussie Millions Opening Event satellite, but due to my recent run bad I decided to just see what I could make of this third buy-in.

James busted from the satellite early and then proceeded to lose $200 in cash games as my stack had been cut to barely fifty big blinds. I decided to just see it out and try and run it up to $100 or get stacked before grabbing some food and maybe catching a movie before hitting the felt again later that night. With my last $23 I eventually got it in holding J♠ 6♠ after there was a raise to $10 and seven callers. The original raiser called the re-raise before the player on his immediate left pushed all in for over $150. Everyone folded, the original raiser called holding King-Queen to be in horrible shape against the re-raiser’s Kings. The board ran out with two Jacks on it, but when a nine-ball landed on the river to see the King-Queen make a straight I made my way to the rail as I waited for James.

James donked off another $100 and joined my upstairs in the food court to try and get off tilt. I cold drink and plate of rice later I was fine, but James wanted to hit the $5 blackjack tables.

Since I found it hilarious when he lost – as he was betting $5 a hand – I started cheering for the dealer to deal him 20 and himself 21 etc. Down $45, we left the blackjack table only to stumble across a $15 squeeze Baccarat table!

The only difference was that on ties you lost your bet, but if you made eight or nine with three cards you were paid out two-to-one. Following the trait of the last few hours, James dropped $200 after betting on the opposite to everyone else just so he could squeeze and then slowroll all of us slanty eyes.

He made his way downstairs while I remained trying to get unstuck. All I could manage however was a $50 profit after hitting nine in three cards on my last squeeze.

Returning downstairs I found James on a $2-3 NLH table, and once the seat on his immediate right freed up after a half hour of sweating him I decided to fill it.

Half an orbit would past until I was in the big blind and then proceeded to go on a mini-heater and win the next four pots. After James had straddled I flopped top pair holding King-Jack and found two streets of value, before check-calling three streets next hand holding King-Queen after flopping top pair on a straight and flushing board. The third hand saw my tens holding up against Ace-nine on a nine-high board, and my King-Queen managed to win another pot on the fourth hand after again flopping top pair.

Sitting with over $450 in front of me after my initial $200 buy-in, I decided to call it quits for the night after an orbit went by. This may have been a stupid decision but over the past few weeks every losing session has seen me profit on my first buy-in before getting stacked – and after the roller coaster of a week I have had I decided just to pocket the profits and return to Geelong.

All in all it was a huge week for me (sarcasm detector soaring) as I profited a whopping $90 after playing seven sessions over three days . . . sigh . . . what a waste of time . . . but least I didn’t lose!

My final weekend in Las Vegas was action packed full of watching TV, packing, eating, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, gambling, cleaning, more TV and more eating . . . yeah I know I’m boring!

Saturday started slowly with lots of cleaning, packing and watching WPT reruns. Eventually I fell asleep on the couch before awaking to a black night sky. I got dressed, ran upstairs to see Eric asleep, and heading to Del Taco to grab some food before walking over to SouthPoint to watch a late session of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Transformer’s was the first cartoon I ever watched, and even though I don’t have much recollection of the story lines from back in the late 80’s and 90’s, I still love the movies. I thought that this movie was just as good as the last one and maybe even better. The CGI of the Autobots and Decepticons battles were amazing and the story line kept you interested.

I got a phone call mid-movie and used it as a time to quickly run to the bathroom, and it was Eric informing me that he and Chris Boncek were heading to The M Casino. The movie finished and I raced home just before it started bucketing down with rain as we made our way further down Las Vegas Boulevard.

Once we walked into The M we were both amazed at how such an amazing hotel could be located nearly 30 minutes from the Strip. It was grand, and had a somewhat oriental theme to add to a Venetian-type alluring odour that circulated the floor.

We walked through a relatively quiet gaming floor for a Saturday night, and was just amazed at how stunning all the waitresses were. Young and gorgeous were just an understatement as we met with Boncek and made our way to the poker room to play some $4-8 Limit Holdem.

It was a weirdly structure game as the blinds were $1-2 and the opening raise was to $6 and the $10 with consequential streets following the usual betting limits. I was getting scolded over and over for not putting out the right amount of chips, but after a while it finally clicked when I scooped a huge pot holding Q♠ J♠. I two-bet preflop and it was pretty much called round. The flop fell 10♠ 7♠ 4♠ and it was capped by both Eric and me, along with some Asian-tard. The turn dropped the 4♦ and it was two-bet before the 7♥ was checked on the river.

Eric mucked his busted straight-flush draw with 5♠ 6♠ as the Asian-tard mucked a 10. From there on I played fairly tight hitting Jacks-full on the river to take down a big pot, and also taking a few small ones to finish up $58 for the night.

We were home by 3am and I played the PokerNetwork Vic Champs Mini-League eventually getting bored and busting fairly early after building a solid starting stack.

As Sunday rolled round, and only half my packing and cleaning done before departing to Lebanon, I knuckled down and took care of most of it before Marc and Catherine arrived to go gambling at SouthPoint with both me and Eric.

Those three grinded a loss on BlackJack before we went over to Pai Gow Poker where I chipped up $50 and Eric regained some of his profits before returning to the BlackJack table to lose them all!

We headed to one of the restaurants and enjoyed a quick Mexican fiesta before we parted ways to see Eric continue his packing while I watched Rounders before falling asleep to . . .

It hurts, doesn’t it? You can’t believe what fell. All your dreams . . . dashed . . . Hopes down the fucking drain . . . Your fate, he is sitting right beside you . . . That Ace could not have helped you . . . I bet it all!

You’re right, Teddy . . . The Ace didn’t help me . . . I flopped the nut-straight!

Well I busted the tourney and headed straight to the Rio while listening to 30 Seconds To Mars looped (really emo, self-hating, wanna slit your wrist stuff) with the volume booming so loudly my BOSE headphones were close to bursting!

Once back at the Rio I moped round telling anyone I could my bad beat story, and after coping the frankly I don’t give a damn expression from GG he asked me if I wanted to head Downtown to be wing-man for Dave King. I choose to join the fight to get DK hooked up, and Donnie also joined us.

We arrived at the Golden Nugget and walked through the carpark, pass the pool and then to the middle of the casino floor to hit a crossroad of what to do. Donnie wanted to play BlackJack, GG wanted to play Craps and I (obviously) wanted to play Baccarat. Since Donnie didn’t want to play craps, and either didn’t know how to play baccarat we all sat down at our own blackjack table.

I have no idea why I even sat down at the table because it is definitely –EV for me as I have no clue on any strategy. Donnie and GG just told me what to do and I followed; eventually returning to even after an early down swing. I quit, Donnie continued to grind and GG got stacked.

Over to Craps we went.

Me and GG started our roll pretty well with us both banking some profit before meeting up with some friends as DK had messaged that he would have to ditch us because the girl wanted to ‘stay in’.

We met up with Melissa (our camera girl) and her boyfriend Eddy at the roulette tables and I grinded a small profit before we threw $2 each on the number ten as Donnie quickly slammed down $75 on black.

”Number 10 for the PokerNews crew!”

Bang! The ball bobbled into the ten and we all banked a nice win while we headed back to the Baccarat room so that I could grind the $10 shoe as GG went back to BlackJack. He won what he was losing all back . . . and then lost it all again while I pushed my profits up to the $200 mark. Donnie and GG decided it was time for some old fashioned poker and they sat down at an uncapped $1-2 No Limit Holdem table.

Donnie and GG in action

I railed them for a while before returning to Craps to take my profit up to $350 for the night as we rolled past 4am. Back to poker I returned to see GG playing like a complete nutter as Donnie grinded a steady profit. After GG pushed all in dark for around the 100 bb mark and won some and lost some he cashed out to head to craps. I sat with Donnie for a little bit more before heading to join GG.

We stood near the craps table for nearly three minutes waiting before GG walked over to us.

”I’m done”
“Ok, craps it is then”
“No . . . I mean I’m done!”

With GG dropping the last of what he had in just eight hands of Blackjack we made our way home just as the sun was starting to rise. I booked a $350 win, Donnie was even to up and GG . . . well GG advised me not to repeat how much he had dropped . . . so let’s just say it was between $5 and $5000 . . . I’ll let you be the judge!